Some good features in there:
- Full facebook integration (at last).
- new Maps look good.
- FaceTime over 3G (handy).
- Being able to automatically respond to a phonecall with a text message will be very useful when I'm on the bike.

no shortcuts to simple switches, such as on/off for wifi/3g etc (sbsettings).

That used to be a reason to jailbreak for me, but since moving to an iPhone 4 and iOS 5 I rarely ever bother turning off Wifi, 3G or Bluetooth anyway. Battery life is much better these days (I find anyway).

Unless turn by turn uses cached maps, it won't really replace TomTom - which runs on any old iPhone and copes with lack of network.....

Can't find anything that confirms or denies that. The new maps are vector-based rather than bitmaps, so they'll certainly take up less space if they do cache them. Plus, since they are Apple's "own" maps (rather than being licensed from Google) then they *could* do it without licensing issues.

Whether they do or not remains to be seen.

If I want to conserve the battery for some reason I just put it in flight mode.

But then you can't get calls or texts. Just turning off Bluetooth, Wifi and 3G reduces the power consumption (a bit) but you can still be contacted.

More important, from an Apple perspective, is should I sell a kidney to get the new MBP Retina Sooper Edition?

This is what I want to know. I was set on getting a 13" pro, but the new MBP 15" is lighter and thinner, and with the educational discount it almost looks reasonable. The only issue is the small SSD. 250GB is no where near enough for all my music and HD video

Show me any mobile device that has run Flash properly. As far as I've been able to determine, Flash has never run properly on a mobile, Adobe have failed to get it to work with any degree of consistency. The only real irritation is that some badly designed sites insist on requiring Flash just for buttons, like the Glastonbury Festival ticket site, where in order to attach a photo and register for tickets, you need Flash installed! WTF! What incompetent idiot thinks that's a good idea? And Flickr seems to require Flash just for the buttons to select photos to upload, so I can't upload directly from my phone or iPad. Again, WTF! That's just crap, lazy web design.
If a website requires Flash in order for me to see content, then they've failed massively to understand that millions of people now use touch screens almost exclusively, and every one of those people is a lost prospective customer.
Dammit, even Adobe have belatedly realised that software designed to be used with a mouse and cursor is utterly doomed with modern touch screens; how the hell do you do a 'mouse hover' with your fingertip?
And geoffj, just what on earth would it have taken to impress you? Explain, in detail, please, to the class; enquiring minds want to know.

And geoffj, just what on earth would it have taken to impress you? Explain, in detail, please, to the class; enquiring minds want to know.

These for a start:

And Smart Stay, which uses the front-facing camera to periodically check if it can recognise a pair of eyes looking at it and if not, it turns the screen off to save power.

There’s also Smart Call, which dials a contact’s number for you by raising the phone to your ear from the contact details screen. True, these seem like nothing more than gimmicks, but they are quite cool ones.

And Smart Stay, which uses the front-facing camera to periodically check if it can recognise a pair of eyes looking at it and if not, it turns the screen off to save power.

There’s also Smart Call, which dials a contact’s number for you by raising the phone to your ear from the contact details screen. True, these seem like nothing more than gimmicks, but they are quite cool ones.

The first one would be usefull on a pad, where you might be reading something for a while without interacting with the screen, rarely the case with a phone.

The second one, well most of my contacts have 2 or three numbers, so I don't see the advantage at all.